Towel flap pops Mexico's Fox

Some analysts say, however, that the lack of concrete results in Fox's first seven months as president bodes ill for a country that requires deep economic, political, and social change if it is to modernize and better the lives of its 100 million citizens.

Skeptics say what amounts to a call for patience underscores how little the new president has delivered.

Fox's tax-reform initiative, which he says will give Mexico the revenues it needs to improve conditions in the country, faces growing opposition in Congress and out. The seven-year-old Mayan Indian rebellion in the southern state of Chiapas - which Fox once said he could solve in 15 minutes - smolders on. The 7 percent growth rate candidate Fox promised has been trimmed by Fox to an anticipated 2.5 percent for 2001.

"July 2 was more than a change of government, it was a change of regime, and that Fox accomplished," says Lorenzo Meyer, a prominent observer of Mexico's political evolution at Mexico City's Colegio de Mexico. "But the more time goes by, the more it seems that while Fox knew his objective was to defeat the PRI, he didn't really know why. The 'what for?' of the Fox presidency is what people are starting to question."

A feeling that "our destiny is not in our hands" or that leaders are not delivering what they promised is not unusual in a world where countries often have few economic options, Mr. Meyer says. But he adds that this sentiment is exacerbated in Mexico by particularly low government revenues that hamper Fox's field of action.

Mexico takes in an anemic 11 percent of GNP in taxes and other government revenues, compared to closer to 30 percent in the US and even other Latin American countries. Fox's plan to boost revenue by taxing food and medicine while lowering income taxes on the wealthiest is so far hitting a stone wall.

Arturo Nunez, a former PRI congressional leader, says what Fox wants to accomplish requires "alliances," especially in a Congress with no clear majority and where the president's own National Action Party remains as critical of Fox as other parties.

"We're in a situation where the president is learning to be a leader and lobby the Congress he needs at the same time; while his party, which developed as an opposition force, is also learning what it is to be in power," Mr. Nunez says. "That learning process is taking longer than is good for the country. It has the yellow caution light burning bright."

Opposition parties have seized on towel-gate, which broke in the press earlier this month and has dominated newspaper pages and Mexican conversation since then, as a way to blast Fox. In one lampoon, politicians and supporters of the Democratic Revolution Party paraded around the center of Mexico City wrapped in towels.

Fox, a tall, down-home-talking cowboy politician, has shot back at his detractors by saying that the remodeling costs became public knowledge thanks to his administration's policy of openness.

"Today, even the price of the towels we buy is in the public domain, and it is good that the media should let people know," Fox says. "That is transparency."

(c) Copyright 2001. The Christian Science Monitor

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